Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Some guy
named “Steve” who contributes to the group apologetics blog Triablogue informs us
that “Feser seems to have a following among some young, philosophically-minded
Calvinists.” (Who knew?) “Steve” is awfully perturbed by this, as he
has “considerable reservations” about me, warning that I am not “a very
promising role model for aspiring Reformed philosophers.” And why is that? Not, evidently, because of the quality of my
philosophical arguments, as he does not address a single argument I have ever
put forward. Indeed, he admits that he
has made only an “admittedly cursory sampling” of my work -- and, it seems, has
read only some blog posts of mine, at that -- and acknowledges that “this may
mean I'm not qualified to offer an informed opinion of Feser.” So he offers an uninformed opinion instead,
making some amazingly sweeping remarks on the basis of his “admittedly cursory”
reading. (Why that is the sort of example “aspiring Reformed philosophers” should
emulate, I have no idea.)

Normally I
ignore this sort of drive-by blogging, but since Triablogue seems to have a
significant readership among people interested in apologetics, I suppose I
should say something lest “Steve” corrupt the Calvinist youth by his rash
example.

Friday, April 25, 2014

I’d like
once again to thank Keith Parsons, and moderator Jeffery Jay Lowder, for the
very fruitful first exchange we had a few weeks ago. You can find links to each installment here. Per Jeff’s suggestion, our second exchange
will be on the topic: ”Can morality
have a rational justification if atheism or naturalism is true?” Jeff has proposed that we keep our opening statements
to 2500 words or less, and I will try to rein in my logorrheic self and
abide by that limitation. That will be
difficult, though, given that my answer to the question is: “Yes and No.”

Let me
explain. I’ll begin by making a point
I’m sure Keith will agree with. Many
theists and atheists alike suppose that to link morality to religion is to
claim that we could have no reason to be moral if we did not anticipate
punishments and rewards in an afterlife.
I am sure Keith would reject such a line of argument, and I reject it
too. To do or refrain from doing
something merely because one seeks a
reward or fears reprisals is not morality.
I would also reject the related but distinct claim that what makes an
action morally good or bad is merely
that God has commanded it, as if goodness and badness were a matter of sheer
fiat on the part of a cosmic dictator who has the power to impose his will on
everyone else. This too would not really
be morality at all, but just Saddam Hussein writ large.

Friday, April 18, 2014

The God of classical
theism -- of Athanasius and Augustine, Avicenna and Maimonides, Anselm and
Aquinas -- is (among other things) pure actuality, subsistent being itself,
absolutely simple, immutable, and eternal.
Critics of classical theism sometimes allege that such a conception of
God makes of him something sub-personal and is otherwise incompatible with the
Christian conception. As I have argued
many times (e.g. here,
here,
here,
and here)
nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact, to deny divine simplicity or the other attributes distinctive
of the classical theist conception of God is implicitly to make of God a
creature rather than the creator. For it
makes of him a mere instance of a kind, even if a unique instance. It makes of him something which could in
principle have had a cause of his own, in which case he
cannot be the ultimate explanation of things. It is, accordingly, implicitly to deny the
core of theism itself. As David Bentley
Hart writes in The Experience of God
(in a
passage I had occasion to quote recently), it amounts to a kind of “mono-poly-theism,” or indeed to atheism.

But it is not only generic theism to which the critics of classical
theism fail to do justice. It is Christian
theism specifically to which they fail to do justice. One way in which this is the case is (as I
have noted before, e.g. here)
that it is classical theism rather than its contemporary rival “theistic
personalism” that best comports with the doctrine of the Trinity. But to reject classical theism also
implicitly trivializes the Incarnation, and with it Christ’s Passion and Death.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Last week I
gave a lecture at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, CA, on the theme “What
We Owe the New Atheists.” You can read
the text and/or listen to the audio of the lecture at
TAC’s website. The faculty,
students, and guests who attended were a wonderful bunch of folks and I thank
them for their very kind hospitality.

Thursday, April 10, 2014

Philosopher
Tony Brueckner of UC Santa Barbara died this week. Tony was a professor of mine when I was in
graduate school, and served on my dissertation committee. I remember him as an excellent teacher, a
formidable philosopher, and a nice guy with a droll sense of humor. I recall a phony pop quiz he handed out in
class one day. The first multiple-choice
question read: “What is your name? (A) Bruce, (B) other.” After a reference he once made to the tune in
a comment in the margins of a term paper of mine, I can never listen to Steely
Dan’s “The Fez” without thinking of Tony.

Tony was a
philosopher’s philosopher, and his work was largely devoted to a rigorous
investigation of the philosophical issues surrounding Cartesian skepticism. No one seriously interested in that topic can
avoid grappling with Tony’s work on it, most of which is collected in his book Essays
on Skepticism. Related issues
are pursued in Debating
Self-Knowledge, co-written with Gary Ebbs.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

The
relationship between memory and personal identity has long been of interest to
philosophers, and it is also a theme explored to good effect in movies and science
fiction. In Memento, Leonard Shelby (played by Guy
Pearce) has largely lost his ability to form new memories following an attack
in which he was injured and his wife raped and murdered. He hunts down the attacker by assembling
clues which he either writes down or tattoos on his body before he can forget
them.

In Philip K.
Dick’s short story “Paycheck” (which is better than the movie adaptation starring Ben Affleck), the protagonist Jennings has
agreed to work for two years on a secret project knowing that his memory of it
(and of everything else that happened during those years) will be erased when
the task is completed. When he awakens
after the memory wipe, he learns that he had, during the course of the two
years, voluntarily agreed to forego the large paycheck he had originally
contracted for in exchange for an envelope full of seemingly worthless
trinkets. He spends the rest of the
story trying to figure out why he would have done so, and it becomes evident
before long that it has something to do with the secret project’s having been a
device which can see into the future.

(Readers who
haven’t either seen Memento or read
Dick’s story or seen the movie version are warned that major spoilers follow.)

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Not too long
ago I attended a conference on theology and technology sponsored by First Things. Unsurprisingly, the question arose whether
modern technology is on balance a good or bad thing, and the general view
seemed to be that it was in itself neutral -- its goodness or badness deriving
from the circumstances of its use. As
Fr. Thomas Joseph White pointed out, however, from a Thomist point of view,
while circumstances can certainly make the use of technology bad, of itself it is actually good rather than merely neutral. It is the product of the practical intellect,
the exercise of which per se helps
perfect us (even if, again, circumstances
can make technology, like other products of practical reason, evil).

Naturally I
wholeheartedly agree, being not only a Thomist but a confirmed city dweller and
something of a technophile. Still, it is
worthwhile considering whether there is something special about modern
circumstances that makes technology morally problematic. I think there is, though by no means do I
think these circumstances suffice to make modern technology on balance a bad
thing. On the contrary, I think on
balance it is a very good thing. But all
good things can lead us to hubris if we are not careful, and there is a special
way in which we moderns need to be careful.

About Me

I am a writer and philosopher living in Los Angeles. I teach philosophy at Pasadena City College. My primary academic research interests are in the philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. I also write on politics, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective.